Homeschooling
Choosing a math curriculum: Saxon, Singapore, or Beast Academy
Saxon, Singapore, and Beast Academy are not interchangeable. Each does a specific job well and others poorly. A guide to picking the right one for your kid.
Homeschooling
Canvas, Schoology, and Google Classroom: an honest LMS comparison
Three K-12 LMSes dominate, and they optimize for different things. A practical comparison for districts and departments choosing or rethinking their stack.
Coding bootcamps in 2026: outcomes, costs, and which ones still work
Bootcamps have matured. The hype is gone, the field is smaller, and the picture is honest enough now to compare schools and outcomes seriously.
Topics
Digital Literacy & Media
Reading, writing, and thinking in a media environment that wasn't built in students' interest. We cover information literacy, source evaluation, attention, and what it means to be a careful reader and a credible writer online.
“10 Years of Blogging: Time for a Change and a Book”
24 posts
EdTech & Classroom Tools
Honest reviews of the apps, platforms, AI tools, and devices teachers are asked to adopt. We assess what genuinely helps students think, what just keeps them busy, and what's heavily marketed without earning its place.
“Canvas, Schoology, and Google Classroom: an honest LMS comparison”
23 posts
Schools & Policy
What happens to teaching when policy meets practice. We write about school systems, assessment regimes, district decisions, and the quiet politics that shape what's possible inside the classroom.
“The UnCommon Core”
20 posts
Teaching & Pedagogy
How real classrooms work, lesson by lesson. We write about instructional design, classroom practice, and the small craft decisions that shape what students actually learn, separating durable pedagogy from passing fashion.
“The lesson plan structure that survives most edtech fads”
17 posts
Professional Development
Notes on how teachers actually grow. We cover conferences worth attending, PD that doesn't waste a Saturday, and the case for treating educators as career-long learners rather than topped-off skill sets.
“ISTE 2010: Easy…Not Free”
16 posts
Online Learning
MOOCs, course platforms, bootcamps, and the rest of the open-web learning economy. We cover where online courses deliver, where they don't, and how adults are actually picking up new skills outside traditional classrooms.
“Coding bootcamps in 2026: outcomes, costs, and which ones still work”
7 posts
Recent writing
EdTech & Classroom Tools
Mind Mapping Love
We’re big mind map people, and MindMeister has our minds a fluttering. It’s a web-based collaborative mind mapping app that makes it easy to import FreeMind and MindJet MindManager maps, collaborate with others, track history, publish and embed maps, and even get Twitter update alerts—all while smoothing out that “publishing hump” much like Skitch and Jing.
EdTech & Classroom Tools
What the Tweet?
A conversation with ourselves about why we use Twitter, what “tweeting” is, and how following and followers create a strange sense of presence and connection we can’t quite explain.
Digital Literacy & Media
Micro Comment Away
Bud Hunt was nice enough to throw up a test of the CommentPress theme that allows paragraph by paragraph commenting, and we posted some session descriptions we were thinking about for the Learning 2.0 Conference we’ll be at in Shanghai in September.
Professional Development
Why is it so Hard for Educators to Focus on Their Own Learning?
We’ve been pushing teachers to examine how new technologies challenge their own personal learning, yet most questions still focus on safety, tools, and delivery rather than on educators’ own learning practice. Why is it so hard for us, as educators, to put our own learning first?
EdTech & Classroom Tools
It’s Not Just the “Read/Write” Web
There are more educators using blogs, wikis, and Read/Write Web tools than ever, but the real shift isn’t just about publishing student work—it’s about networks, connection, and ongoing learning beyond individual projects and classrooms.
Schools & Policy
The Problem in a Nutshell…The UnProblem in a Nutshell
Yesterday at NECC was one of those yin/yang experiences, with one of our worst conference moments ever, which, as these things go, preceded probably the best conference feel good ever. The contrast between a disappointing Web 2.0 panel and the vibrant, collaborative energy of the Blogger Cafe captured both the problem and the promise of how these tools can truly transform learning.
EdTech & Classroom Tools
Web 2.0 as “Cultural and Intellectual Catastrophe”
Andrew Keen at the Britannica blog writes something so diametrically opposed to our own take on things that it’s startling and, frankly, amazing on some level (as well as ironic). We do agree with one thing: this is a critically serious debate about Web 2.0, education, and the future of our information economy.
Teaching & Pedagogy
Learning from our Kids…Doll Web Sites
Reflecting on our daughter’s fascination with doll web sites, we think about “social networking with training wheels,” the commercial aspects of kids’ virtual worlds, and how much time children should spend navigating online spaces alongside their offline play.